my space on the internet for random thoughts

Ready to Have Fun With Bits?!

Special thanks goes to Peteris Krumins who shared some
invaluable insights about blogging.

TL;DR: Bla bla bla about who I am. In this blog, I’ll talk about software
development techniques, low-level hacks, game development, kernel, among other
interesting topics I feel it’s worth sharing with my readers.

I don’t expect people to know me prior to reading my blog, so I’m going to
introduce myself.

I think that my father (unfortunately, he’s no longer around us) is the main
reason behind my interest in computers. When I was about 10 years old, he
taught me how to use commands to interact with MS DOS. I remember the most
important commands were to edit texts, execute programs, and navigate through
the file system. I don’t know how many times I messed up with the operating
system, making impossible to boot it. I had a lot of fun doing it though.
After that, I was able to create my own websites using HTML and CSS. I didn’t
even know what programming actually was at that time. I was just curious and
wanted to do interesting things with my computer.

I actually started with programming after I got interested in creating my own
alternative server for a MMORPG called Tibia. Of course, I didn’t create the
server, but the experience made me learn how to host a server, manage my
website and consequently a database which stored players' data, and also
how to write scripts using LUA programming language for custom systems,
like quests and spells.

At that time, I wasn’t even thinking of computer science as a career. I was
just having fun with bits. Pun intended :-)
But I changed my mind and joined a local university for a computer science
degree. It helped me a lot because I wanted to be the best programmer among
my peers. I worked really hard. A friend of mine a.k.a. kov introduced me to
the open source world. He told me about the job opportunities I could get if
I started helping relevant open source projects out there. IIRC, Linux kernel
was the first open source project I contributed to. The change was to slightly
improve the PID allocation code. I will not lie. It was extremely hard to find
something to do, but the experience taught me a lot. I was really obsessed
with kernel. I often found myself whispering the word ‘kernel’ while showing or
walking down the streets. I wanted to better understand how computers worked,
from boot to application initialization.

As I was gaining more experience, I contributed to other projects until I got
my first job opportunity at an israeli startup called Cloudius Systems.
It was working on creation of a project called OSv. In OSv, I
worked with file systems. Mostly on improving ZFS support. I’m working for the
same company, but now on creation of a distributed database called
ScyllaDB.

I think I’m considerably better than myself of 5 years ago, but there’s a long
way to go until I can say I’m really good with computers.
By the time being, I’ll keep repeating this ZEN poem to myself:
“To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the
master, see through the master, become the master.”